Drawing Board
by CDV86
Summary: Peyton realises that it's not just a love of drawing that she passed on to her daughter. A brief one-shot.


If the great passion of Peyton Sawyer's life was music, then her artwork was a close second.

When she first fell in love with Lucas Scott, it was her art & his unwavering belief in her that drew them together. Her art mattered, he had said. Those three words were the most important that anyone had said to the seventeen year old cheerleader, and they still resonated as her inspiration years later – to the point that she returned to them to Lucas when he needed them most.

To Peyton Sawyer, her art had always mattered. After her adoptive mother's death, Peyton had begun drawing as a way to stay close to the woman who raised her & had bought her the first art book she ever owned. After meeting her birth mother, Peyton had worried that she had inherited nothing from Anna Sawyer, but that wasn't true – whilst Ellie was an artist herself, it was Anna who had originally inspired Peyton, who had taught her that sometimes you can't say what you want but you can still express yourself though art. It eventually occurred to Peyton after Ellie's own passing that maybe the reason she had chosen Larry & Anna Sawyer as the adoptive parents of her unborn daughter was that Ellie & Anna were actually rather similar in that regard.

Naturally, when Peyton Sawyer became Peyton Scott & had a daughter of her own, she made sure that her daughter would have art in the same way she did when she was growing up – a way to say things that can't be said with mere words.

Sawyer Scott loved drawing. Her mom & dad loved that all of her masterpieces – from the finger paint butterflies she had drawn in nursery, to her family portraits, to her avant garde work on the bedroom wall. Well, maybe not that last one – Sawyer had been confused why she was being told off when she ran out of paper, and besides, Grandpa Larry and Uncles Nathan & Derek said that her mom painted on the walls all of the time.

She was especially proud of the drawing she had done of herself with her cousins when they came to stay, that her mom & dad had hung on the refrigerator, and had given a copy to Aunt Haley & Uncle Nathan.

As it turned out, drawing on the walls wasn't the only habit that Sawyer had inherited from her mother.

It was a pleasant spring day, when Lucas & Peyton found their 4 year old daughter happily drawing on the kitchen table. After a quick glance to make sure he wasn't actually drawing on the table – Sawyer was still struggling to remember to put down more paper if she was going to go over the edge of the sheet – the two young parents happily let their daughter work to her heart's content.

At least, Lucas did.

"Peyton." he said, as his wife looked over into the kitchen for the twentieth time in the past quarter of an hour. "Let her draw."

"I just wanna see what she's drawing, Luke. In case you've forgotten, she gets that from me."

"Trust me, I haven't forgotten." Lucas sighed.

He'd honestly be worried if he had forgotten – he could still remember the first time Peyton caught him looking at her art without permission. All blonde hair & venom, as Keith had described her.

"I'm going to get a glass of water." said Peyton, pulling herself off the couch.

Unfortunately, Lucas didn't catch what his wife said, he was caught up in his own memories for a moment.

"Okay." said the writer, absent-mindedly, before realising a few seconds too late what his wife was doing.

As quickly as he could, Lucas hopped off the couch & was set off down the hallway before he knew he was too late.

"GO AWAY IT'S NOT FINISHED!"

Even from the other end of the hallway, Lucas could see that Sawyer had thrown herself on top of her drawing, and was currently staring (Admittedly, absolutely adorable) daggers at her mother, who stood with an astonished look on her face.

"Peyton." Lucas called out to his wife, prompting her to head back down the hallway to where he was standing.

"Did you hear what your daughter just said to me?" she asked, still stunned.

"Babe, I think they heard it back in Tree Hill." replied her husband, who was smirking the entire time.

Peyton took one look at Luke, currently trying to hold back his laughter "What's so funny?"

"You don't see it, do you?"

After a few moments, Peyton suddenly realised what he was getting at.

"It's not funny." she said, pouting as she dropped down onto the couch.

"It's kinda funny." sniggered Lucas, no longer able to hold his laughter in anymore, as Peyton looked at him with a familiar expression, her "Okay, it was funny but I'm trying to be mad at you" face.

"Kinda." she conceded, finally laughing at her own stupidity.

Sawyer Scott was definitely her mother's daughter.


End file.
